Fragile Remedy

by Maria Ingrande Mora

  “Feed. Ever again.”

  “Well, I can, dear,” Alden said, sighing. “But I won’t.”

  “This is how much you’re supposed to have.” Alden indicated a line on the delicate glass vial on his work area in the back room he rarely let Nate see. He dragged his fingernail to a line on the side of the vial much lower than the first. “This is how much I can give you today.”

  Fine tremors ran through Alden’s fingers when he tipped the liquid into Nate’s mouth.

  Nate’s headache faded in minutes, but dull pain pooled under his skin like a bruise. When Alden didn’t shoo him out of the room, he lingered, surprised to see vials and equipment he didn’t recognize. Alden had never spoken of cooking his own chem, but the scrap paper covered with figures and the intricate tools on his workspace told another story. Was he pushing his own blends?

  I don’t want to know.

  Ignoring Nate, Alden divided pills into piles with a small plastic card. Unsettled, even now, with Alden’s practiced ease with chem, he sat on the floor in front of a cabinet full of dusty bottles. He found a rag and wiped down each bottle, arranging them by shape.

  He still felt guilty for borrowing Alden’s Diffuser without giving him anything in return. He had to make himself useful another way. And he had to keep his hands busy, or he’d curl over himself and scream.

  The bottles clinked and shone in his hands. They were old—blue and green and brown, painted with symbols he didn’t recognize. He blew on the opening of one to see if it would make music, like an instrument he’d seen a busker near the rails play. But it sounded like wind rattling across a broken pane of glass.

  Alden poked him with a long, bare toe. “What are you doing?”

  Nate’s eyes were sore from squinting. “I’m cleaning these bottles.”

  “Yes, I see that. But it’s been four hours. And you’ve rearranged them a dozen times now.” Alden crossed his arms. “And it’s getting dark. Go . . . do something normal.” When Nate stared at him, he rolled his eyes and pointed at the curtains to Fran’s room. “Talk to Grandmother. Learn to knit. Rewire my alarm system for the fifth time. Relax.”

  “Relax and wait for the stillness to come?” Nate’s fingers tightened around one of the bottles. He set it down carefully when his hand prickled with the urge to throw it to see what sound it would make shattering against the wall.

  “We’re all waiting for the stillness. I don’t see why you can’t enjoy it.” Alden offered Nate his hand and grunted with the effort of wrenching him up. They stood very close. “I have ways to help you enjoy it,” he said softly.

  Nate jerked his hand out of Alden’s grip. “I’m not going to sleep through the rest of my days. I have things to do.”

  “Suit yourself.” Alden handed him a crank-light. “You won’t have to go far when you change your mind.”

  After twenty minutes in bed, Nate chose to rewire the alarm system.

  It’s the fourth time, not the fifth.

  It took two days.

  After that, he started putting together the battery packs Reed and the gang needed to keep their system running at night. He paid too much attention to every pang of hurt and exhaustion that meant he was running out of time, but it didn’t drown out the sounds of distant explosions and the lingering smell of smoke. The world wasn’t going to stop when he was gone. He had to do something to keep them safe, no matter where they hid.

  Alden rolled cigarettes on the table next to Nate’s mess of wires and circuits. “What is this for?”

  “The gang.”

  “It seems I can’t be rid of your Reed, even when he’s gotten rid of you.”

  Nate fumbled and pinched his finger with his pliers. A small bead of blood welled up. “Alden! Do you have to do that right there?”

  “I can do this right here as much as I please, because this is my shop. And my home. You are my ungrateful, messy guest,” Alden said without venom. “And you should watch your tongue.”

  There were plenty of other surfaces for Alden to work on, but he lingered near Nate all day long. Probably to keep a running tally of every bit of tech Nate managed to rummage from dusty drawers and cabinets.

  Nate sucked on his finger, grimacing at the taste of blood. “Fine.”

  “Do you plan on dropping that tech on their doorstep like the winter witch leaving presents for little boys and girls?”

  “I’ll pay a Courier.”

  Alden slapped his hand down on the table, startling both of them. He stared at the scattered cigarettes and Nate’s dropped pliers.

  “I told you,” Alden said, careful and slow, like he was fighting to make every word sound even. “You can’t go talking to strangers. To customers. To Couriers. To anyone. Gods, Nate. You never listen to me.”

  He stalked away to the basement, leaving Nate with a half-finished battery and heavy knot of hurt in his chest.

  Unable to focus on the battery after that, Nate found a ladder and went up in the crawlspace to repair the ticker cables for Fran. She kept a ticker by the bed in the back room where she spent most of her days, and lately, the signal had gone patchy. Her room had the nicest furniture in the house—a real bed on a frame and plush, musty carpeting. The season lingered in the mildness between winter and spring, allowing Fran to keep her back window open instead of boarded up.

  The sounds of the alleyway—sex and laughing and fighting—filled her room that afternoon as Nate sat on the floor beside her bed, fingers as tangled in the wires of the ticker as hers were in her knitting.

  “What’s that?” he asked, waving his pliers toward the mess in her lap. The yarn was orange and slightly shiny, something synthetic that must have been hand-spun from recycled plastic and old cloth.

  “A scarf for Alden,” she said, looking over the edge of the bed to study Nate as if watching a cat play with scraps of thread. She wore reading glasses with mismatched lenses. “It will be cold again before it gets warm.”

  “How do you know?”

  “When you come to be my age, your bones remember. Frontward, backward. You’ll see,” Fran said.

  Nate smiled. “You’re good to him.”

  “The Old Gods will take me soon,” Fran said with calm certainty. “He’ll need to keep warm.”

  “You can’t know that.” Nate turned his attention back to the wires under his fingertips. A shiver ran down his arms, making the fine hairs stand on end. “You’re as strong as a girl half your age.”

  Fran chuckled and continued knitting, the needles clicking together with an even, calming rhythm. “Flattering bird, tweeting away at me. Come back to nest, have you?”

  “I’m short a few eggs,” Nate said, wincing when his sore finger caught on a sharp edge in the guts of the ticker. “Did you know many GEMs?”

  “Not many. Alden’s mother—Gods keep my dear girl—worked at the gates. She said she saw them now and then in motorcars. They wore gray.” Fran paused her knitting and fluttered her knotty fingers at her throat. “And collars, here. Like animals. But she was a fanciful girl, always telling stories.”

  “They always died before they were grown?”

  “The GEMs? They went away, every one, while they were fresh, like you.” Fran glanced at him. “You’re not so fresh now.”

  “It’s always been that way?”

  “When I was a girl, before Winter Heights fell, there were no GEMs. Magic brought them into the world, but the magic doesn’t want to stay. Don’t be afraid, little bird. You’ll fly to a better place.”

  “Like the Mainland?” Nate asked. He knew what she meant—the room behind death, the unknown sleep—but the Mainland was easier to think about.

  Fran hummed. “You like stories too.”

  “Happy ones,” Nate said.

  “The clouds aren’t gray on the Mainland,” Fran said. “The rain tastes sweet, and the gro
und is a great carpet of soft grass.”

  “That’s a good story.”

  “When the sludge pulls our flesh from our bones, we’ll float away to the Mainland,” Fran said.

  Unsettled, Nate went silent. But the knot in his chest loosened little by little as he listened to the click-pull of Fran’s knitting. He weaved together the wires and circuits that would bring the ticker back to life. Fran liked to hold it and read the Gathos City news, even if her old eyes could barely make out the scrolling text.

  “Did Alden know his mother?” Nate asked. Alden would hate him prying, but Nate’s new expiration date—and Alden’s nasty attitude earlier—made him less inclined to worry about what Alden wanted him to do or not do.

  Fran continued her knitting without slowing or missing a stitch, but her lips tightened before she spoke. “He did, for a decade or so. She didn’t die well. It was here, in this house. Alden wasn’t well after that. He takes his medicine now, so he won’t be thinking about her.”

  It was rare to get such a lucid streak out of Fran, so Nate pressed on. “What about his father?”

  “Never a father around here. My Alba was an independent girl. She inherited this shop from my husband after Alden came along. He’s never known anything but this place. He was only a boy when he took on Alba’s work.”

  Nate tried to picture a child in the shop with no one but an eccentric old woman to keep him company. He snorted, realizing it wasn’t all that different from his childhood with Bernice.

  “Grandmother.” Alden peered through the doorway. “Are you troubling our young Tinkerer?”

  “Are you troubling him?” Fran asked.

  Nate laughed. “I’ve just finished up. Here you are.”

  He scrambled up and tucked the ticker against the folds of quilted fabric that covered her from the waist down where she reclined on the bed like a moth-eaten queen. She placed a warm, leathery hand over his and smiled.

  “It’s still not working,” she said.

  Nate leaned over her and squinted at the ticker, frowning. Fixing a ticker was child’s play. “It looks all right to me,” he said, nodding toward the scrolling words. Then he looked closer.

  The Breakers will catch you when you fall.

  It repeated in a loop. Nate squinted at it, trying to make sense of the message. Maybe it really was broken.

  He reached for the ticker, and a normal broadcast resumed. Food ration delivery times and weather alerts and decades-old lung-rot symptom warnings scrolled by.

  “Can you fly, pretty bird?” Fran asked.

  “She’s off again,” Alden said at Nate’s ear, making him jump. Fran watched them vacantly, her gnarled fingers continuing to knit the orange scarf for Alden.

  They settled Fran’s blankets together and cranked the light beside her bed to keep it going while she finished her knitting. She’d sleep soon, her wasted body exhausted even by lounging in bed.

  “She told me she’s going to die,” Nate said.

  “She’s been saying that for six years. I have a pile of scarves to prove it. Come on,” Alden said, taking Nate’s hand and leading him out of the room. “You need to eat something.”

  They sat behind the counter with crunchy bread that tasted more like ash than usual. Alden broke pieces off and ate them delicately, glancing at Nate between bites.

  “You’re acting strange,” Nate said.

  “You’re acting stranger. Aren’t you afraid?”

  “When I think about it, I guess.” Chewing a gritty, unappealing mouthful of bread, Nate considered what Fran had told him about Alden’s mother. If Alden had watched his mother die, no wonder he dreaded keeping Nate around. Maybe that’s why he was so short-tempered.

  After a long silence, Nate asked, “Do you want me to leave?”

  “Don’t be stupid. I told you to stay,” Alden said in a tone Nate didn’t feel like arguing with.

  “If I’m going to die anyway, why don’t I let the gang turn me in to the Breakers?” Nate asked. “If we planned it right, you could split the bounty with them.”

  Alden sighed. “I knew that was coming, but Gods behind the stars, you’re not even addled yet. Honestly, Nate. How have you lived to see sixteen?”

  “I’m serious. If I’m going to die anyway, shouldn’t someone profit from it?”

  “The difference,” Alden said, “is that dying is the end of the road. Giving yourself to them isn’t the end of anything.”

  “No one knows what happens when a GEM goes to the Breakers.”

  “Have you ever heard a good rumor about it?”

  Nate frowned. “No.”

  “Rumors are rarely born out of thin air. There’s truth in some of what they say.” Alden cleared the plates—pink ceramic with a rose print and chips along the edges—and walked to the front of the counter. He stood before Nate as if he’d come to purchase one of the dusty bracelets under the glass. “If I had you the way they’d have you, I’d never let you go.”

  “I know,” Nate said, conscious of how close Alden was, even with the counter between them. Alden’s hunger simmered, barely suppressed by the chem he put in his body all day to forget how badly he needed Nate’s blood.

  How hard is it for Alden to be around me?

  Feeding Reed once hadn’t been a risk. It was the small doses, the little tastes of euphoria, that had driven Alden to a fierce, abiding hunger. It had gotten so bad before Nate had walked away that it wasn’t a stretch to imagine what would have happened to him in Gathos City—or how much Alden wanted him now.

  Unwilling—or unable—to check his desires, Alden had kept Nate weak. He’d fed on him daily, leaving Nate dazed and euphoric. Nate’s memories of those weeks were shadowed and not unpleasant, but he remembered his own horror starkly from the day he’d awakened enough to find the seasons changed entirely. He’d lost months in Alden’s arms.

  “And they’re not burdened with caring about you,” Alden said softly. “You’d be nothing more than meat to them.”

  Nate’s gaze snapped up as Alden’s words sank in. “All right. Okay.” He tried to smile, his heart skipping an uncomfortable beat. “It’s a bad idea.”

  Alden wiped the dishes with a cloth and replaced them on a tilted shelf. His hands shook. “Make your bed on the floor in my grandmother’s room.”

  Nate preferred his bed in Alden’s room, and he opened his mouth to protest. But Alden turned and watched him with a plain, anguished sort of hunger that made Nate’s breath hitch.

  “All right,” Nate said. “Fran could use the company.”

  Nate could have stayed up for hours working on the battery and listening to the street outside, but the look on Alden’s face sent him to bed early. And once Fran fell asleep, snoring like a kitten, Nate got up and locked the door.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  That night, Nate struggled to sleep, aware of every creak in the old building and every distant shout in the night. He tossed and turned in his pile of musty blankets, wishing he could turn a crank-light on and find something to do to settle his restless mind and the itch to move.

  Memories nagged at him. Good days at the shop—days spent drinking watered-down tea with Fran and fixing things until his back ached and accomplishment warmed his guts. Bad days—Alden flying on a new strain of chem, too frantic to carry on a conversation and convinced there were snakes in the bathroom sink.

  The bad days weren’t as bad as the hurt that had lingered after Nate had walked away.

  And after he’d walked right back, when staying away had become impossible.

  The first time had been a quiet evening, when the shifts at the workhouses changed and long shadows promised a break from the heat. It was then that fiends sought the solace of a chem-soaked night, the hope of a better day. Nate chose a busy time, so it wouldn’t be too conspicuous when the clatter of chimes announced his e
ntrance.

  Alden stood behind the counter, counting out little glass vials for a tattooed white woman with graying hair who scratched relentlessly at her hip. Nate couldn’t make out what Alden was saying, but he saw his shoulders tighten and one hand dart out to push his hair behind his ear in an uncharacteristic gesture.

  Normally, Alden wore his hair with the confidence of a brightly feathered bird.

  But this wasn’t a normal day. It was Nate’s first time back at the shop since he’d left for Reed’s gang. If Alden felt a fraction of the tension coiling Nate’s guts into ugly knots, it was no wonder he fidgeted.

  As Alden helped another customer, Nate let his eyes drift to the glass cases that held cut-glass jewelry and trinkets that were decades older than him. Dust covered the shelves and gathered on the polished concrete floor, but in the cases, time had stopped. Blue and black velvet cradled beaded bracelets, incense burners, ceramic mugs, and paperweights etched with the Gathos City skyline. Once or twice a month, someone asked Alden to open the cases, but they never made a purchase. Instead, they’d cradle a relic, fingering an emblem or the tiny paw of a crystal cat, and then they’d hand it back and wistfully ask for the going price of chem.

  Nate crouched, studying a shiny cigarette case, when he felt the rustle of Alden’s silky robe beside him and realized everyone else had left the shop. Golden light poured in the front windows, making the thin blinds look like flames. The embroidered flowers on Alden’s robes glowed.

  And his dark eyes glowed too. “Why are you here?” he asked, pulling Nate up by his collar and releasing him like he’d touched sewage.

  “You know why.”

  Alden let out a soft, incredulous huff of breath that carried the sticky-sweet scent of a chem tincture. “You made it clear you didn’t need me anymore.”

  Nate had practiced this conversation for weeks, every rehearsal becoming more frantic as his headaches grew more frequent. He’d whispered to the ghost of their friendship as he’d crossed the Withers from Reed’s hideout back to the shop. He’d found the right words. But now, faced with the way Alden gripped his robe with bloodless knuckles, he forgot everything he’d meant to say.